The presently preferred form of the invention involves apparatus for providing for movement of an undetermined mass of ungrouped bottles in bottle-to-bottle contact and gravity fed down an inclined path or paths and deposited in sequence into cases moving in case-to-case contact horizontally beneath the paths on conveyor means and positioned beneath and adjacent the exit end of the inclined paths, the leading edges of the bottoms of adjacent bottles; becoming further apart in the horizontal case-moving direction upon descent. Said cases can be of any length capable of housing the bottles i.e. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 bottles, etc. in a lane. Any combination of the same can be randomly fed non-stop through the packing operation. The lane or path may comprise rails carrying in adjacent lanes two or more series of bottles and the apparatus can be retrofit to existing continuous drop packers and conveyor means associated therewith or employed with other conveyor means leading to and away from the packing site. Means are provided to control the speed of the bottles leading to the cases of the packer of this invention. Control means are also provided to automatically detect any failure of delivery of bottles to the inclined path, lane or rails and to stop the machine in such an event until bottles are again delivered in a line to the path or paths whereupon the movement of bottles in the line is once more resumed and control means are also provided to indicate and stop the machine if improper spacing occurs between the cases or the bottle improperly seats in a case or the like.
An object of this invention is to produce bottle packing mechanisms which can be retrofit on straight-through case feed drop packers and to feed thereto bottles in a continuous manner into the cases by placement of the same therein without interruption in the process and without the need of standby operating personnel to re-establish the operating cycle when malfunction occurs.
A further object of the invention is to provide a continuous motion packer which is inexpensive in manufacture, highly efficient in use, and which provides increased productivity and avoids delays in the operation and the use of unnecessary manpower.
Other objects of the invention and the invention itself will become more readily apparent from a preview of the following description in which description reference is made to the accompanying drawings.